Krysty didn’t hesitate. She shot him in the back once, below the shoulder blade. A clean chill shot, right through the center of the heart. He fell on his face in the dirt and didn’t move again.
From inside the tent came the sound of a raging gun battle, a battle sawing back and forth, and people screaming.
As Mildred and Krysty knelt beside the opening, the folks of Bullard ville started spilling out into the daylight, their eyes wide with terror.
They didn’t understand what was going on, what had been about to happen to them, how close they had come to horrible death. All they knew was that some strangers in the audience had opened fire on the carny crew, and that the crew had returned the favor.
And that they were caught in the middle.
THE MOMENT RYAN SAW the men in the black, hoodlike masks enter the tent, he knew the waiting was finally over and the time for action had come. He knew because he’d personally looted antichem warfare gear from stockpiles when he was traveling with Trader.
When push came to shove, there wasn’t all that much you could do to disguise a mil-spec gas mask. Ryan glanced over at J.B., who was looking at him. The Armorer knew, too. He had seen it at the same instant Ryan had. He put his hand on Jak’s shoulder and the albino nodded.
Dean noticed this gesture and response, and immediately looked up at his dad, concern on his face. Ryan gave him a smile, which the boy instantly returned. Whatever happened next was in speed of hand, and in the hand of fate.
And what flowed between father and son in that second before battle was wider than the widest river. A great, brawling planet and its circling, perfect moon.
There was no reason not to smile. He who had everything, who wanted nothing, had nothing to fear.
When the tarp-covered cage was in the center of the ring, one of the masked rousties loosened a tie-down, raised the edge of the tarp and ducked his head and shoulders under it. The other masked men waited, their arms crossed over their chests, for him to finish.
The Bullard ville audience waited for the Magnificent Crecca to reappear before them and in his dulcet tones to announce the next amazing act, to tear back the tarp and reveal the caged wonders concealed beneath.
In the trailered box on the other side of the ring, behind the wall of mirrored glass, a creature half of flesh, half of steel waited for his victims to start, dying. Ryan Cawdor waited for no one.
With his shoulders squared on the chosen target, he cleared the SIG-Sauer P-226 from its holster.
A pair of .38-caliber blastershots popped from behind, from the direction of the tent’s exit. The heads of the masked men in the center ring jerked around in surprise. At the same instant, the predark weapon in Ryan’s fist bucked as it fired.
The bulge of tarp concealing the head and torso of the masked roustie took three tightly spaced rounds at its upper end. A millisecond later, the half concealed man dropped out from under the flap, dropped as limp as jelly to his knees, and then fell forward. Inside the black hood that could fend off the terrible corrosive power of Zyclon B but that offered no protection from full metal jackets, what little remained of his head rested against the hub of the trailer’s wheel.
Without pause, even as the last of the trio of 9 mm slugs thumped flesh and bone, Ryan swung his aimpoint and to the right and fired repeatedly.
As fast as he could pull the trigger, he poured round after round into the front of the mirrored box, hoping to nail the unspeakable spectator, the force behind the evil that was planned for Bullard ville.
The creature known as the Magus. Bullet holes stitched across the mirror’s silver surface.
From across the center ring, the tiny dark holes looked like pinpricks. Pinpricks that cracked and crazed into each other, dropping and shattering huge pieces of glass.
Under his ravening fusillade, the entire mirror wall crashed from its frame, allowing him to see inside. Among the litter of silver shards, there was an overturned armchair, its backrest pocked with many slug holes, the stuffing blasted out the back in handfuls. The door to the rear of the viewing box stood open. No corpses littered the floor.